Sharing and celebrating the knowledge, innovation and creativity that is shaping the business world.

Jazz Shapers

Jazz Shapers is presented by Mishcon de Reya's Director of Business Development and former LBC presenter Elliot Moss. During each show, Elliot will be interviewing shapers of the business world, people who, like the musicians in the show, have defied convention and gone on to achieve great success.

Lawfully Chic

A blog for art-lovers and adventurers, fashionistas and culture vultures, who believe in fair play, fair trade and fair travel.

Mayfair Private

Mishcon de Reya has created Mayfair Private to provide private advisory services for a select group of families by bringing together a broad range of highly qualified professionals to seamlessly manage their affairs.

MDR Brand Management

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MDR Lab

A programme open to early stage and growth technology start-ups, whose products or services are applicable to the legal industry.

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The Academy is Mishcon de Reya's in-house place of learning, our driver for growth and a platform for thought leadership. Here we will bring together urgent societal issues and industry experts to deliver innovative thought leadership on issues that matter to us and to our clients.

Mishcon Graduates

The future has never been more unpredictable, demanding or challenging. Never before has there been so much information to absorb, so many social and business networks to navigate, and so many economic, political and social issues to confront. And the role of law has never been more pivotal in all of this.

Mishcon International: Africa

We are proud to launch Mishcon International: Africa - a dedicated microsite featuring curated content most relevant to the audience in the region. This content will be regularly refreshed, taking into account global developments and their impact across Africa.

Mishcon International: Asia

At Mishcon de Reya, we are proud to serve an international community of clients. Based in London, our work is often cross-border and complex. We act as personal advisors, dealing with carefully selected overseas professionals on behalf of our clients. We are experts in preserving, growing and transferring wealth, and our clients in Asia span both the world of corporate and private wealth giving us a unique perspective on the market.

Mishcon International: Eurasia

Mishcon International: Eurasia - a dedicated microsite featuring curated content most relevant to the audience in the region.

Mishcon International: Europe

We are proud to launch Mishcon International: Europe - a dedicated microsite featuring curated content most relevant to the audience in the region.

Mishcon International: Middle East

Mishcon de Reya has now launched Mishcon International: Middle East - a dedicated microsite featuring curated content most relevant to the audience in the region. This content will be regularly refreshed, taking into account global developments and their impact on the Middle East.

Mishcon New York

Mishcon de Reya New York LLP opened in 2010 with a small group of lawyers having two things in common: a proven track record in New York City and a desire to create a new kind of law firm in the city.

Property Shapers

Insights from industry leaders | real estate blog

The Leap Hub

The Leap is an initiative to identify 100 of the most exciting, fast-growing companies in the UK. Keep up to date with events and news about The Leap.

Imagine paying people no strings attached cash, whether they have a job or not. In California, two experiments are being planned that some think could be the solution to a potentially jobless dystopian future.

Imagine paying people no strings attached cash, whether they have a job or not. In California, two experiments are being planned that some think could be the solution to a potentially jobless dystopian future.

Doping: The Athlete’s Dilemma

Posted on 13 July 2015

Imagine this: you are an elite athlete, you’ve just finished fourth in an Olympic track final, you’ve trained all your life to get here and now you’ve just missed out on a medal. The winning athletes are off on a lap of honour as the crowd goes wild, whilst you stand there on the track, alone. You find yourself wondering whether those who beat you have been secretly using banned performance enhancing substances and your mind moves to the hard training you will need to do for the next Olympics in four years’ time.

Arguably, with more and more allegations being made, the use of performance enhancing substances is widespread enough that many modern athletes may well consider the doping route: use them and risk a lengthy ban if caught, or stay clean and perhaps never win a medal that you might otherwise have won in a fair contest.

You may have seen the BBC’s Panorama investigation "Catch Me If You Can", which made allegations of unethical practice and perhaps doping in relation to the Nike Camp Oregon Project - allegations that are denied by all involved in the Project. From an anti-doping law perspective, there were two particularly topical aspects to the programme.

The first is the increased sanctions under the revised 2015 WADA Code, which came into force on 1 January of this year. A key change was to raise the usual sanction for the core doping offences from a two to a four year ban. If the most serious allegations made by Panorama - that athletes and coaches had in their possession testosterone containing supplements and that these were given to athletes - were to be proven, they could carry a four year ban for the athletes involved. The likely charges would be use or attempted use of a prohibited substance (Article 2.2) or possession of a prohibited substance (Article 2.6).

The second topical aspect is the remarkable ease with which journalist Mark Daly was allegedly able to beat WADA’s flagship biological passport test using micro-doses of self-administered erythropoietin ("EPO"). EPO is a protein naturally produced in the kidneys that controls red blood cell production. Artificially increasing EPO levels raises red blood cell concentration in the blood and improves aerobic exercise performance (key for endurance events). Using EPO purchased over the internet from China, and without the expert medical team an elite athlete would have, Mark Daly was able to increase his aerobic athletic performance by 7% in seven weeks, a huge amount in the context of elite sport.

The biological passport tracks an athlete’s body biochemistry over time. It is designed to identify changes in biochemical parameters that track the effect of doping and so catch a doping athlete even after the banned substance has left their system (for EPO it would track red blood cell parameters). If Mark Daly's experiment - and a similar study broadcast in France in May of this year - is more than a fluke, then regulators may be further behind in the race to keep sport clean than they would like to admit (however, in a statement WADA said "the [French] study does not accurately follow the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) guidelines, and therefore its relevance to the ABP is not entirely clear"). Academic psychology tells us that it is the perceived likelihood of being caught, rather than the length of the sentence if caught, that most dissuades us from rule breaking. Thus, if the biological passport can be broken with ease, it may perhaps encourage those on the edge of doping, for whatever reason, to do so.

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